14 DAY TRIAL // Mozilla is gearing up for the release of its own mobile operating system, and has just offered some details on the platform.
Dubbed Boot to Gecko (B2G), the platform has been under development since last year, when Mozilla first announced plans to be working on it.
Apparently, the project is advancing nicely, and Mozilla has showcased some of the upcoming platform, including its Gaia UI.
The B2G/Roadmap unveils the fact that the OS might become a product before the end of the second quarter of the year.
We also learn that, while the B2G Developer Phone milestone was reached in Q4 2011, the first demo for the platform is set for this quarter.
Apparently, the team behind the project plans on having the mobile platform ready for showcase at the Mobile World Congress set to kick off on February 27th in Barcelona, Spain.
Boot to Gecko is built on a layer called Gonk, which is Linux-based. It also includes hardware abstraction layer, the telephony stack, and other low-level system elements. The Gecko rendering engine is the middle layer, while Gaia comes on top of it.
Gaia will include a variety of applications, starting with a browser to access the Internet, going all the way to apps that are essential for the communication capabilities of any phone, such as Dialer, SMS application, and the like.
At the moment, the browser included in the OS is said to be working, the same as the camera and the gallery application.
The User Interface (Gaia) will also include Settings manager, Apps store, eBook reader, and a Media player. Additionally, Mozilla promises a distinct look-and-feel for the UI.
However, in a world dominated by Android and iOS, there are not too many graphical changes that one might include in a new OS, so do expect familiar elements to be present in Gaia. You can have a look at the UI via the screenshots that arstechnica has just published.
